Birmingham Moseley commence what looks certain to be a make-or-break month for their National One hopes when they host Blackheath tomorrow.

The Greenwich-based outfit, who finished third last season behind current leaders Hartpury and promoted Richmond, are currently two positions and three league points behind second-placed Mose.

Director of rugby Kevin Maggs opted to rotate his Moseley squad for last week’s trip to bottom-of-the-table Macclesfield, and having survived a nightmare five-hour coach journey to escape with a last-minute penalty-try inspired win, he is now hoping to reap the rewards.

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“The boys have trained well this week, and we’ve blown the cobwebs away from last weekend,” he says.

“The lads we rested last week have benefitted from the break, and all now seem to be fine. It is also important to give opportunities to other lads in the squad to put their hands up for the bigger games, and they all did well.

“George Grieve had his first start, and it was good to see Tom Wilson who has been on loan at Bromsgrove have a good game in the back row.

“That allowed the likes of Jack Preece and Mike Penn to have a rest, and hopefully we’ll get more out of them in the big games coming up as a result.”

Drew Cheshire's second try against Loughborough Students (Image: Simon Grieve)

Moseley fill face a Blackheath side who have registered an impressive 40-point win over Coventry and picked up a precious away win at Ampthill already this term. On the flipside, they suffered a home defeat at the hands of Loughborough Students last weekend, which was doubly surprising given their long-standing reputation for producing formidable forward packs.

‘The Club’ as Blackheath are known, are likely to include former Coventry second row Greg Gillanders and experienced centre Simon Whatling, while Wasps loan players could do head-to-head in the forward battle.

Black-and-gold Academy hooker George Edgson is in his second season with Blackheath, while Will Stuart, who has played a handful of games on Moseley’s tight-head, was last week joined at Billesley Common by Wasps’ former Cornish Pirates second row Marcus Garratt.

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“Macclesfield wasn’t the best game for Marcus to be involved with to start with,” Maggs says. The travel issues we had were out of our control, then when we got there the pitch was a bog, although after trailing all the way through the match we showed great character and spirit to come back and win it.

“I thought Marcus did really well; he put a lot of effort in, and actually scored a try which wasn’t given.

“Will Stuart has been excellent since he first joined us, and I’m hoping we have the two of them available regularly in the coming weeks, but that’s up to the conditioning experts at Wasps, and we have to play it week-by-week.”